The present invention relates to PC software applications that access the Internet, and more particularly to a method and system for querying and posting to multiple career websites on the Internet from a single interface.
Internet career websites are global online networks for careers that connect companies providing job opportunities with qualified individuals seeking jobs. For job seekers, career websites offer a host of features, which typically include job listings, resume management, personal job search agents, chat and message boards, privacy options, expert advice and career management. Because different jobs may be posted on different career websites, individuals typically make use of more than one career website to maximize their results. Each of the career websites, however, typically requires the user to login and enter job search criteria. Therefore, the user must repeat entering this information at each of the sites.
PC software applications have been developed that are designed to make job searching and submission of a resume to multiple career websites easier for the individual.
One such PC application connects to multiple career websites over the Internet and allows users to submit their resumes online. The application would prompt the user for information and store the user information into fields in a database. When the user wanted to submit the information to one of the career websites, the application would format the data and send it to the career website. Because each career website requests different user information and store""s the information in different database fields, each career website that communicated with PC application required customized software from the career website for receiving the data from the application and for translating the data from the application""s format into the career website""s format.
The problem with this approach is that if the application is changed or if any of the career websites change implementation, then both the application and the customized software for each of the career websites needs to be updated. Thus, the customization required to integrate the application with the career websites significantly hindered the adoption of the application by additional career websites. An additional drawback is that the PC application had no job searching capability, requiring the user to go outside of the program and manually search each job site individually.
The assignee of the present application developed a resume and job search PC application that improved on the prior approach. This application incorporated a job finder feature whereby the user could enter search criteria for multiple career websites and the results would be displayed in one location. However, because each career website has different fields for searching and uses different names for some of those same fields, the application only let the user enter job search criteria into fields that were common to all the career websites. For example, some career websites allow the user to search for a job location by city and state, while others only allow the user to search by state. Therefore, to keep the search common to all sites, the PC application would only allow the user to search for job location by state. Due to the generic nature of this job search, the application was incapable of providing job seekers with search results that were as focused as could have been achieved on the career websites themselves.
The PC application also included a resume submission feature that would submit the user""s resume to multiple career websites. However, once the user submitted his or her resume, the user had no way to access the resume. Thus, if the user found a mistake on the resume, the user had to edit the resume on the PC and then resubmit the resume to the career websites through the PC application. In addition, once the user found a job and wanted to end the job search, the user did not have the capability of removing the resume from the career websites.
Accordingly, what is needed is an improved method and system for searching for jobs and submitting resumes on multiple career websites. The present invention addresses such a need.
The present invention provides a method and system for querying and posting to multiple career websites from a single interface, where each of the websites comprises a plurality of web pages having site-specific fields requiring input of data. The method and system include collecting information from a user, including the user""s resume, and mapping the user information to the site-specific fields of each of the career websites. The method and system further include automatically filling-in the site-specific fields of each of the career websites with the mapped user information, and forming respective query strings from the filled-in site-specific fields for each of the career websites. The respective query strings are then submitted to the corresponding career websites.
According to the system and method disclosed herein, the present invention combines the benefit of one-click searching with the benefit of entering search criteria specific to each career website 14 for more powerful searching all within one interface.